The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New Millennium

Description

Funk argues for the term and concept of ‘reconstruction’ to fill the gap left by the decline of postmodernism and deconstruction as useful cultural and literary categories. The first chapter shows how this notion emerges from the theoretical and philosophical development that led to the demise of postmodernism by relating it to the idea of ‘authenticity’, which is based on an essential and productive paradox of mediated immediacy. The second chapter provides a framework with which to identify and classify the features of ‘reconstructive literature’. The aesthetic strategy of metareference, which is formally based on ontological paradox and epistemological ambiguity, is employed in order to renegotiate the specific patterns of traditional literary communication. Funk’s central claim is that this renegotiation can be profitably described with the concept of ‘reconstruction’, which unites the theoretical concept of authenticity with the formal category of metareference. To substantiate this claim, the second part of the book presents a selection of literary case studies by distinguished and prize-winning writers such as Dave Eggers, Julian Barnes, Jennifer Egan and Jasper Fforde. The individual chapters illustrate the transition from postmodern deconstruction to postmillennial reconstruction by highlighting how metareferential strategies like irony, metalepsis, intertextuality and ergodic reading, challenge the reader to reconstruct constituent element of literary communication such as the author figure, the intertextual framework or the narrative perspective. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Postmodernism’s Wake: From Deconstruction to Reconstruction 2. ‘To Thine Own Self be True’: Eight Theses on Authenticity 3. Holding the Mirror up to Fiction: Metareference in Art 4. From Innocence to Ignorance: Julian Barnes’s England, England 5. Reconstructing the Author: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 6. Reconstructing Literary Influence: Jasper Fforde’s Thursday-Next Series 7. Reconstructing Narration: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending 8. Remainder Bibliography Index